


What Is Obsession?

by Zigster



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Artist!Sherlock, Doctor!John, Drawing, Endless drawings, In a Sherlock kind of way, In a sweet kind of way, M/M, Obsessive Behavior, Sherlock is a bit younger, Sherlock sketches John, Sherlock watches John, Sherlock's POV, Sketching, So is John, Stalking, Voyeurism, paper airplanes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 17:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13551918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigster/pseuds/Zigster
Summary: Written forHope is a Thoroughly Unfinished Story'sFebruary Valentine's Day Challenge."The thoughts on the stranger's life story kept coming as Sherlock filled the little sketchbook in his hands with more and more line drawings of the man's features. Just quick, sharp jolts of likeness, nothing detailed, nothing too permanent. He drew quickly because he felt the man would appreciate the efficiency. It spoke to the man's nature to be brutal and fast and right. This is how Sherlock saw him."





	What Is Obsession?

Written for [HIATUS's February Challenge](https://hiatustory.tumblr.com/): Valentine's Day 

Not beta'd but well looked over

Not brit-picked but (somewhat) researched

Enjoy! 

* * *

 

 

. . . 

 

It was startling to Sherlock that people couldn’t recreate what they saw before them on paper using pencils, inks, and paint as he had done since he was able to hold a crayon in his tiny fist. Sherlock had known he was different since he was three but this particular realisation came when he was seven, and he’d yet to get over its shock. It was an easy exercise, after all. The act of mimicking what was presented to you as closely as you could and with as much detail as you could. It wasn’t a difficult thing to master, it was merely a matter of observing your surroundings.

That was the crux of it, Sherlock thought. People had the ability to see but they did not observe. They did not accept that a nose was not just a crude, two-sided triangle on the center of one’s face but a series of shaded shapes culminating in a solidified two-dimensional amalgamation of a three dimensional part of the body.

And, not everything put to paper needed to be a profound example of chiaroscuro – bold lines sufficed. Quick sketches best utilized in the moments Sherlock never wanted to forget yet had to work lightning-fast to catalog. It was so much more intimate of a memory exercise than storing the visual imagery away in some small drawer in his mind, and felt much more worthy of his time than snapping a simple photograph.

As he grew from a precocious child, slouching into a rebellious teen and finally straightening into an impossible man starting out on his own, these drawings became an essential part of his daily routine. They were, perhaps, the only true structure he allowed. For every sketch he completed, he’d reward himself a smoke. Ten a day, without fail.

Drastic, sharp, black strokes of ink or pen put down quickly and with singular intent to capture and contain kept Sherlock’s spirit high and his observational skills keen. These types of crazed studies were best done on the Tubes in the early mornings before the murky watercolor of London’s fog lifted to a brighter mist as the sun’s dull, white globe made its first attempts to peek above the skyline.

Deep underground, roaring through soddened tunnels of soot and grime, Sherlock smeared his fingers along wet ink, blending when warranted and eradicating when necessary. The right side of his palm blackened, his eyebrow arched and his gaze penetrating the nearly empty car, he pleaded with the man before him not to move from his drug-fueled stupor. He shouted to _stay still_ and _remain seated_ as the car curved with a bend in the train line. The man slumped forward in the slow motion of a heroin addict’s grace and sunk to the floor in a pool of dirtied clothes and unwashed skin; the pose Sherlock had been attempting to render destroyed.

Sherlock realised that he hadn’t, in fact, been shouting out loud, but only in his mind. The scowl he was sending the homeless man’s way seemed unnecessary then but needed, if only for his ego. He pocketed his pens and shot off the train car at the next stop, charcoal tails of wool trailing behind him.

He turned a second before the doors  _snick’d_ closed with a hiss to see the homeless man puke onto the floor in a fascinating display. Nothing but the egg yolk of bile wretched itself free of his stomach and Sherlock frowned, disappointed.   

Striding forwards as the train began its departure, he did not look ahead of him, which was either a fortuitous turn of fate or an act of sheer stupidity seeing as he collided with a gentleman and his walking stick.

The man did not lose his footing, despite the presence of the stick, but in fact, surged forward in retaliation, his arms crowding around Sherlock, binding his limbs to his sides as if Sherlock actually had designs on attacking the stranger.

“Excuse me!” he shouted, and the man actually growled at him. “Did you just growl?”

Just as quickly as Sherlock had been grabbed, he was released, the man with the walking stick stepping back in a flurry of motion, his stick forgotten on the dirt covered tile. He bent over to catch his breath, bracing his hands on his knees, looking as if he’d just ran ten city blocks.

“Interesting.”

This caught the man’s attention. “Interesting? Interesting! What the hell are you trying to pull?”

Sherlock took another step back from the man, his hands raised. “Nothing. Forgive me for disturbing you. Goodnight.”

He turned on his heel and dashed up the nearest staircase to London above, leaving the man and his forgotten walking stick behind.

The man stared after him, bewildered by the encounter. “What an asshole. Oh, and it’s five A.M.!” He shouted this at the empty stairwell where the young man in the dark coat had disappeared to, knowing he wouldn’t hear him. He checked his pockets on instinct, assuming some elaborate plan to pickpocket him had been enacted but no, all of his personal effects were still in place. Sighing, he bent to retrieve his stick and trudged over to the nearest bench to wait for the next train, lamenting the odd, jarring start to his workweek.

**. . .**

 

Three months passed and the city turned from the freezing rain of November to the swirling winds of February carrying with it wisps of white snow - a sign of winter performing its bitter last dance. Sherlock documented every change with his artists’ eye and his quick fingers while he spirited himself around his beloved London, his coattails flying out behind him in his haste to capture and catalog all he observed.

The tube cars were his favourite haunt. And he often found himself there at night, when sleep alluded him and his brain would refuse to quiet. One such evening found Sherlock being thrust through London’s underbelly on the Bakerloo line. It’d gone five A.M. before he even realised he’d been sketching on the tube for nearly six hours, bum numb from sitting on the hard seat and fingers cramped from over-excursion. Surely, this dedication should reward him an extra smoke for the night. Or, was it daytime?

He stretched out his right hand in front of him, noting the black crescent along his palm and the ink smudges staining his ring finger. If he were to be plucked out of a crowd, it'd be rather easy for anyone to discern his chosen hobby, which didn't exactly sit well with him. Studying his hand with a raised eyebrow, he pondered how to be less obvious about his habits.

When the train pulled into the next station, he dashed off the car without even checking where in London he’d landed himself. By fortune alone, it seemed he'd ended up only three stations past his normal stop. Satisfied, he relaxed back against the cool tile wall of the platform to collect his thoughts.

Click, step, _drag_. Click, step, _drag_. The tell-tale rhythm of a person walking with the assistance of a cane roused Sherlock from his musings. 

One eye squinted open in the direction of the sound. Sherlock spied a man studiously dressed in a long winter coat pulled over a hunting jacket, the leather shoulders of which could barely be seen from beneath the heavy tweed. Lazily draped over his neck hung a red scarf; a gift from a relative, no doubt, who didn’t understand him at all considering that red was most definitely not his color. On his otherwise kind looking face, he wore a sour expression which was fairly typical of early morning commuters.

The man was entirely too young to be walking with a cane, and the paradox fascinated Sherlock. Why the limp? What trauma had he suffered? He did not sit, in fact, he stood proud, almost on parade along the platform, his back straight, his head held high. His heels were clasped together in muscle memory and the need of his stick was otherwise forgotten. Sherlock's mind exploded with realisation at the sight; this was a military man.   

Sherlock remained slouched against the wall, his body lax, his one leg propped up on the tile for balance. He did not want to draw attention to himself, he was too fascinated by this stranger to startle the man into noticing him. Other office workers trickled onto the platform, newspapers and lunch bags in hand, surrounding the man, hindering Sherlock's view of him as they shuffled past. A work day, then, Sherlock noted. The man must have an early shift. A military man with a forgotten limp who worked early hours and wore a hideous scarf a sibling gifted him (it must have been a woman with questionable taste) and a put-upon expression ruining the pleasantness of his features.  

Yes, pleasant, interesting features, Sherlock thought. A nose too large for his diminutive stature but with a slight upturn at the end causing a rather endearing result, and heavy bags beneath his otherwise bright, youthful eyes. This man did not sleep well and his barely contained frustration at the world around him spoke volumes to that effect.

What a glorious conundrum of a human being Sherlock found in the wee hours of a dull, dreary morning. He was fully alert once more, any fatigue he felt had been eradicated thanks to the puzzle of the man displayed before him. His ink smudged right-hand twitched at his side, and his brain warred with him on whether or not to risk pulling out a notebook in which to draw the man's face, commit his profile to memory and immortalize him on utilitarian rag paper.

Sherlock felt a stale breeze swirl about his feet and rose up to tousle his infuriating curls. Alarm bells shot off in his mind. He didn’t need to turn his attention from the infatuating stranger to know that the next train was quickly approaching and Sherlock was seconds away from losing everything to the morning chaos of the commuters' routine.

Lightning quick, he pulled out his smallest notebook from an inner pocket of his coat and grabbed a pen from behind his ear. It took no more than ten seconds, but Sherlock slashed the man's profile onto the page in sharp, overlapping lines of black, blotched ink. Staring down at the result, he felt unsatisfied so he flipped the page and started afresh. Sherlock found himself thanking whatever deity he could name for the decency the army forced into its ranks because the innate goodness of the stranger made him step back to allow the other people on the platform to board first after the train had pulled to a stop in front of them.

Sherlock smirked at the gesture, what a self-effacing fellow, the man was. He quickly redrew his profile, showing a gentle three-quarter tilt of the man's head, a captured moment in time as he had let a woman pass in front of him.

Sherlock didn’t allow himself to think once the man finally boarded the train, he reacted on instinct, and sprinted to slide himself between the hissing of the closing doors one train car behind the stranger's. His pulse was pounding in his veins and Sherlock knew it wasn’t from exertion. He felt alive with all synapses firing and stalked forwards to the partition doors leading to the next car, granting him a picture window view of the train in front of him.  

The military man was still standing, of course, holding onto a rail with one hand, while leaving his cane at his side with no weight placed on the aluminum. Sherlock grinned. The only reason a person of that man's age to have been discharged from the army (other than misconduct) would be an injury, and yet the man's limp was a fallacy. He must have been invalided out, and yet the injury was not sustained to his leg. Oh, what a puzzle this man was . . . Sherlock was practically leering as he glared through the doors at the man without a care of how he was perceived by the people around him - much like how a dog would drool at being teased with a juicy bone.

_Dog. Dog tags. . ._

Sherlock's brain rocketed forward to thoughts of whether this man would still wear the requisite identification tags of a soldier? Considering the trauma he sustained to be carrying around a literal crutch for his psychological woes, would he have held onto such a comfort, or would he have hidden them away in a box somewhere? Stored at the back of his desk in his office, or in his sock drawer back home.

The thoughts on the stranger's life story kept coming as Sherlock filled the little sketchbook in his hands with more and more line drawings of the man's features. Just quick, sharp jolts of likeness, nothing detailed, nothing too permanent. He drew quickly because he felt the man would appreciate the efficiency. It spoke to the man's nature to be brutal and fast and right. This is how Sherlock saw him.

Sherlock's excitement grew with each second he spent cataloging every angle of head, shoulder, jawline, and neck available to him.  He was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet when they arrived at the man's stop. He didn’t waste a moment, he dashed off after him, following behind him at an appropriate distance, like a shark lurking in the depths behind his prey.

Sherlock only keyed into his surroundings again when the man entered the building of his employment: St. Bartholomew's hospital.

Odd. And interesting.

Sherlock knew one of the morgue technicians there. She often let him sketch the cadavers whenever he deigned to flirt with her or brought her a coffee in the late hours on days when she worked a double shift.

A smile tugged at the corners of Sherlock's mouth just as an idea formed in his twisted mind. This new information was very good information, indeed. Satisfied with his stalking for the morning, he turned around and walked back to the Underground from whence he came, his mind packed full of thoughts on the enigmatic stranger much like the pages of his sketchbook.

 

**. . .**

 

Sherlock gave himself a week before he dared to return to Marylebone station at 5 A.M. when the military man would be waiting for his morning train. He didn’t want to seem desperate, after all. Which of course, was a total lie. Sherlock was beyond desperate, he was downright needy.

He’d smoked through three weeks allowance in one and his flat looked as if a bomb had gone off inside it, which his landlady would surely be cross about. Every surface was littered with sheets of paper, vellum, watercolor rag, even the curtains held the signs of being utilized. Sherlock had turned the man’s profile into a sort of emblem, a symbol. Something he could draw in three seconds with uncanny accuracy to the man’s likeness. Sherlock wanted the knowledge branded into his fingertips, and he crowed with joy when he could finally enact what he'd seen in his mind’s eye as a moment’s play of representation. To Sherlock, it was a masterpiece, this simple line of a profile: stoic and perfect and brazen in practically one stroke of his pen.

Sherlock laid back in the chaos of his sitting room, the dozens of forgotten, abused sheets of paper crinkling beneath his body as he stretched, languid and feral on the carpet, his muscles protesting the sudden relief.

A knock sounded at his door and Sherlock merely lifted his chin in acknowledgment of the sound, the dazed, natural-high effect of a completed puzzle was overtaking him in delicious waves of relaxation and he felt no need to move or concern himself with whoever was behind his sitting room door.

“Sherlock.”

Another nod of acknowledgment, another stretch of limbs. His arms weaved through papers above his head and came into contact with a stray pen, he fiddled with it in his bone-weary fingers.

“Sherlock.”

The voice sounded exasperated in a way only one person in Sherlock’s life could perfect, and the relaxing waves of satisfaction began to ebb like a retreating tide. Sherlock didn’t bother to chase it, he simply sunk into the remaining melancholy.

“Must you continue with this display? It is not even noon.”

Sherlock’s mouth smirked up at the man.

“I have a job for you if you’re willing to stop writhing on the floor like a dying cat.”

One eye popped open.

“There’s been a miraculous discovery.”

An eyebrow lifted.

“Too miraculous, you might say. A Vermeer has turned up. A never before seen masterpiece that has undergone every possible test to ensure its legitimacy.”

“Yet, you need me to prove that it is, in fact, a fallacy," Sherlock retorted. 

“Correct.”

“Why?”

It was the other man’s turn to lift an eyebrow. “Why? Because an awful lot of money is involved with the purchase and The Duchess of Cambridge is an interested party.”

“Oh, really? How are Wills and Kate?”

The man groaned. “Sherlock, do get up. This conversation is entirely too . . . unbalanced for 10 A.M.”

Sherlock sighed and sat up, bits of paper sticking to his back, his hair in utter disarray. He glared at his older brother, daring him to comment.

“Would you like some tea, Mycroft?”

The man’s face betrayed a moment of pure amazement at the hospitable gesture and nodded in acceptance.

“Great. Kettle’s on the sideboard. Teas above the fridge. I’ll just be a minute.” And with that, Sherlock breezed past his brother and slammed the bathroom door, leaving the man staring after him with a too well-used expression of disappointment.

 

**. . .**

 

“Halt! Stop!”

Sherlock was exerting entirely too much energy on this woman, though he was somewhat amazed at her ability to run in heels across a park. Was she floating above the grass? How did she not sink into the soft earth? The Detective Inspector and his junior associate trailed behind them by a few meters, their shouts barely audible over the din of excitement pumping through Sherlock’s veins and echoing in his ears like rushing water.

Redoubling his efforts, Sherlock surged forward, his fingers just grazing the collar of the woman’s blouse before she performed a split-second feint and dodged left. Sherlock twisted and ensued chase but felt ironclad arms clamp around his middle no sooner than he’d righted his feet in the new direction. All the air left his lungs in a gross cough of breath and he found himself face first with the sodden earth of Regent’s Park implanting itself in his nostrils.

Strong thighs pressed down on either side of his arms and a hand braced itself at the back of his neck, thumb and forefinger poised over the pressure points, keeping him perfectly immobile save for the pitiful kicking of his legs.

“Hold. Still.”

Whoever was keeping him down certainly had an authoritarian manner about him. Sherlock guessed a history of military service by the sound of the command alone and tried in vain to wrench his neck around to get a glance at who’d trapped him.

“Oi! Thanks mate, but you got the wrong guy.” Detective Inspector Lestrade had finally decided to catch up. His associate not far behind.

“What?” The man asked.

Sherlock heard Lestrade huff in exasperation before he introduced himself and explained the situation. “That woman was the criminal. This man was attempting to detain her.”

“Oh.” The man released his hold on Sherlock’s neck the instant he’d gathered this information, though his thighs stayed stubbornly in place.

“Do you mind?” Sherlock asked. He heard the man on top of him cough, followed by a quick ‘right’ and then felt his weight lift. The man clambered to his feet with what sounded like a bit of a drag from his right leg. Sherlock’s senses alerted to the sound with interest.

He stood, wiped his face and brushed off his coat, noting the grass smudges along the waist and lamenting that he’d have to forgo its use in order to have it cleaned. He turned to tell the man that he owed him a cleaning bill when his mouth fell open and his mind went uncharacteristically blank.

The military man from the Tubes stood across from him. The look of utter shock on his surprised face mirrored Sherlock’s own amazement.

“You!”

The single word had been emphatically shouted and reverently whispered simultaneously by both men and Inspector Lestrade saw this as his cue to chime in.

“Hold up, you two know each other?”

More simultaneous talking ensued. A chorus of ‘no, not really’ and ‘yes, he knocked me over one morning, the berk!’ rose up from their mouths with entirely too much volume to Lestrade’s liking. He held up his hand for silence.

“One at a time, if you please.”

The military man shifted on his feet, his stance firm, his hands fisted at his sides. He took in a deep breath and held Sherlock’s gaze. “This man ran into me in the Tubes. Literally. Ran. Into me. Knocked me over. Didn’t even care.”

Images shot to the forefront of Sherlock's mind at the statement, reminding him of the events the man was speaking of . . . _yes!_ This was the man he'd knocked over months ago. The walking stick should have been obvious enough, but the man he'd walked into back in November was the same man whose image he now carried everywhere with him in his pocket. How did he not remember? How could he have ever deleted such an enigma from his mind? 

Sherlock stared at his hands, disappointed but now fully aware of why the man was so angry with him. “I did apologize.”

The military man looked skyward before grinning back down at Sherlock. “Right. It sounded so genuine.”

“Alright, alright. What do you have to say to this?” Lestrade asked Sherlock.

The question caught him off guard. Sherlock's eyes shifted between the object of his obsession and Lestrade, at a sudden loss for words. It was such a rare occurrence for Sherlock that he watched Lestrade take out his phone and actually snap a picture of him. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“I accidentally walked into the man. He pinned me to the spot as if he thought I was going to attack him. Clearly, he suffers a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, though I’m having trouble sussing out why. You’re military. And of a somewhat high ranking. And too young for that cane, which you do not need, by the way. And I did apologize.”

The man blinked back at him like a frustrated owl.

Sherlock wondered if owls could be frustrated and then shook his head clear of such nonsense.

“How . . . how do you know that?”

“Because I have eyes and they work.”

“Yeah. Right. Fine.” He nodded at Lestrade in acknowledgment and shook his hand. “Sorry for the mix-up. I’ll just be going then.” The man turned from the spot, pointedly ignoring Sherlock and walked off, his limp formulating itself the farther away he marched.

“Fascinating.”

“Excuse me?”

Sherlock sighed. “He’s fascinating.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Keying into Lestrade’s tone of voice, Sherlock reluctantly ripped his eyes away from the retreating man and glared at him. “What?”

“You fancy that bloke, don’t you?”

“Pssh.” Sherlock turned from Lestrade, shoved his hands in his stained coat pockets and strode away. The fleeing gallery owner who’d been attempting to sell a fake Vermeer masterpiece to the good ol’ Royals momentarily forgotten. Sherlock had already figured out the false bank accounts the money from the sale was going to be wired to, and alerted the Swiss banks involved. The woman had nowhere to turn. Case, more or less, closed. Perhaps Mycroft would throw in a laundering of his coat along with his payment?

Sherlock’s bravado over a job well done lessened the longer he walked. His arms ached where the man had pinned them to the ground and Sherlock lamented at such a bold, physical interaction that consisted entirely of the opposite intentions Sherlock had so often imagined while his pen was in hand. His fingers twitched in his pocket, the itch to draw the man’s profile rising to the surface like a need for a fix, prodding at Sherlock’s willpower. _Do it. Draw me._

He opened the door to his flat and took the stairs up to the first floor two at a time. A pencil was in his hand and paper before him within a split second of entering the sitting room. He slashed the well-known profile down on the page so hard he ripped the paper. His heart rate was elevated, and his hand shook. What the hell was happening to him? He needed a smoke.

Climbing out the front story window, he dangled his long legs past the ironwork of the Juliette balcony and draped his arms over the ledge, ashing cigarette in hand. He watched people below him go to and from the small ground-floor cafe beneath his feet and glared at anyone who dared look up at him on his perch. He’d finally gotten the chance to meet his obsession face-to-face and what had occurred? The man practically spat at him with disdain. Sherlock didn’t understand why he was so upset with that little tussle in the Tubes all those months ago. He’d certainly gotten the best of Sherlock both times they’d met, considering each time ended with the man wrapping himself around Sherlock like a human straight jacket. Sherlock wished the reasons for such handling of his person were different, but alas, it was obvious that the man did not like Sherlock at all. That or the man was harboring some latent sexual identity issues and refusing to acknowledge them. Neither of those scenarios worked out well for Sherlock.

Well, what else was new? No one liked Sherlock. His own brother could barely stand to be in his presence for more than three minutes. At least that feeling was mutual.

He threw his half-smoked cigarette down onto the pavement and folded himself back through the window into his flat. Developing emotions for other human beings always ended in Sherlock being theoretically spat at - why did he even bother?

Over the next half hour, Sherlock found himself picking up each scattered piece of paper with the man’s image. He folded the pages into paper airplanes and collected them around himself on the carpet, a semicircle of obsession personified into a simple child’s toy. His landlady had, at some point, come in to deliver his afternoon tea and lit a fire in the grate. She’d mentioned the airplanes, saying how proud she was of him having tidied up, and then scuttled off from whence she came. Sherlock barely took notice.

The fire she’d left behind, however, drew his attention. He stared at it in a trance-like state, his mind racing with existential frivolities and perhaps a little self-indulgent pity. One by one, Sherlock picked the airplanes, studied them and then flew them into the grate. He watched as they each dwindled from a red-hot crinkle of eroding white lines to grey ash, and the sensation it left simmering in his belly felt right. Good, even.

Systematically he flew each airplane into the hearth in a morbid game of mental self-destruction. It was a better harbor for his frustrations than some of his other habits, and the more practical side of him allowed the pitiful dramatics to slide in favor of the natural katharsis it provided.

When only two airplanes remained, laying delicately in his lap, he paused and looked down. The pair of them made sense to Sherlock, and so he didn’t send them to the pyre but instead, placed them atop the mantel, bookended on either side of his precious skull. The symmetry of such a composition didn’t look right to him, though, so he picked one back up, held it gingerly in his hands, and sat back down on the carpet. Around him, the flat looked empty without the pages of the man’s profile littering every surface and that both satisfied and saddened Sherlock.

What perturbed him further was that Sherlock didn’t even know the man’s name. The military man, the soldier, the object of Sherlock’s fixation had no name. Nameless obsessions seemed more dangerous than titled ones. Sherlock needed to find a name for this person. In all his sleuthing, he never managed to procure a name. Perhaps it hadn’t mattered? Perhaps it was the act of artistic creation that spurred Sherlock forward, and not the man himself but purely his image?

Perhaps.

Sherlock was never satisfied with a ‘perhaps’ or a mere ‘assumption.’ Such mental laziness was destructive to his logical faculties and therefore frowned upon. No, Sherlock needed a name.

His newfound convictions made the pallid faces of the cadavers he used to sketch back in uni float to the surface of his memories. The nameless victims of crimes or street folk who’d never been claimed by the loved ones they didn’t have were often utilized by the medical students and artists studying anatomy at the school. Sherlock had always been the most eager on cadaver days. His willingness to deduce how the people had come to find themselves not breathing on a slab spurred his professor to contact the Yard, telling them of a precocious young man in need of an outlet for his macabre fascinations. The man who had picked up the phone that day was Detective Inspector Lestrade. The rest, as they so often said, was history.

Those cadavers Sherlock had so eagerly assessed and studied down to the centimeters of dried skin along the heels of their feet were never truly nameless. The morgue technicians always gave them names, basic identities: Jane and John Doe, respectively.

Sherlock fondled the airplane in his large hands and unfolded the carefully creased paper. Beneath his fingers lay the man’s profile so well known to Sherlock now he could retrace its curves and dips in his sleep.

Sherlock smiled and stroked the simple black lines with reverence. “John.”

 

. . .

 

Having named the man didn’t alter his ardently negative opinion of Sherlock, nor did it change the fact that Sherlock now would never go unnoticed on the train platform if he decided to follow John to work again. The soldier that he was meant his instincts would alert to threats in his vicinity and Sherlock was most definitely considered (for now) a threat in John’s mind.

Sherlock did not mind being disliked by generally everyone around him. He’d grown used to it from his childhood days when he and his brother found themselves alone on the playgrounds with all the other children having run away to play elsewhere. Sherlock was very used to being disliked, yes, but he would not accept John disliking him. There was something profoundly wrong with that summation and Sherlock had never felt a need so keen to make someone be fond of him. How did one even go about such a task? Sherlock knew practically nothing of social niceties or even social cues. He was an outcast not only by choice but by nature’s design.

With his mind racing, he climbed out of his cross-legged position on the carpet and stumbled to the kitchen on unsteady, still sleeping legs. He put the kettle on and leaned against the counter, steepling his fingers beneath his chin in thought.  

Behind him, the kettle boiled and he turned to pour himself a cup of tea. He didn’t drink it, just held it, carrying it around the flat with him for warmth, allowing the heat of the cup to seep into his fingers and sooth their ache. He wanted to draw. He wanted to create a world on paper in which John returned Sherlock’s overwhelming feelings and will the entire thing into existence. Instead, he put down his cup and picked up his violin. It wasn’t the same as a pen, but it gave his mind a creative outlet and allowed it to fixate on other matters: intonation, timing, finger placement, bow alignment, the color of the sound.

He played until his mind stilled and the swirling images of John’s disappointed face turned warm and soft, his firm hands coming to find purchase on Sherlock’s skin, learning its secrets and creating new ones. Sherlock’s eyes slid closed, allowing the daydream to solidify and grow bold. He played, willing the dream into existence with the measure of his bow until the amorous thoughts blended and morphed into nothing but bright bursts of rhythmic noise blooming behind his eyelids. He played until his landlady, Mrs. Hudson, put a hand on his shoulder to still him, and gently removed the violin from his shaking fingers and replaced it with a cup of tea and a plate of food.

The clock on the mantel read 2 A.M.

Feeling dazed, he thanked Mrs. Hudson and sat heavily in his chair, the tea spilling slightly into its saucer. His bones ached and his eyes burned. He felt sweat on his brow, and his lip trembled when he attempted to sip the tea. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept but he knew better than to ignore the cup of tea and the finger sandwiches that had been placed before him. He ate them with the measured bites of a man going through the motions of what was expected, and he supposed, under Mrs. Hudson’s exhausted, watchful gaze, he very much was expected to eat and quiet down. When she seemed satisfied with his intake, she patted him on the shoulder and shuffled back downstairs, her polka-dotted dressing gown sliding down the steps behind her. He realised afterwards that she hadn’t even said a single word to him. Sherlock appreciated her in more ways than he cared to count.

It was obvious to Sherlock that Mrs. Hudson cared for him, even loved him. She was practically a second mother to him. Granted, he’d ensured the death sentence of her late, abusive and cheating, drug-dealing cad of a husband, but beyond that, she genuinely liked him. How had he gotten her to do that? What had he done to garner her good opinion?

He wanted to go downstairs and ask her in that moment but gave it a second thought after glancing at the clock again. Why was time so concrete to most people? Just because it was 2 A.M. and black as death out didn’t mean people couldn’t still be productive. Sleep was boring, anyway.

He was halfway down the stairs to Mrs. Hudson’s ground floor flat when he spotted something he’d long taken for granted as a mere piece of innocuous decoration along the entrance hall wall - a silhouette, done in a Victorian manner, complete with high collar and Gibson hairstyle. It was Mrs. Hudson’s silhouette. A gift. Sherlock had drawn it up, had it framed, and given it to her after his first year at Baker Street as a sort of thank you for dealing with his varied eccentricities. He hadn’t meant to bring sentiment into the experience, but Mrs. Hudson’s eyes had welled up like street corner puddles in a downpour and Sherlock found himself wrapped in a watery hug, with a blubbering landlady exclaiming all kinds of affections into his wool coat front.

He had been amazed at the time of such a simple gesture causing a literal outcry of emotion. Stumbling into a social situation where he ended up doing the right thing was a rarity, at best. 

“Of course,” he said, as he looked at the now cherished silhouette, displayed proudly in the front hall for all who visited to see. “Yes, of course!”

Sherlock clapped his hands together, spun on the spot and dashed back up the stairs, a most excellent idea itching to burst forth from his very fingertips.

The clock read 2:21 A.M. on the mantel. That was alright. He had more than enough time before five. He quickly grabbed up brush, ink, and paper, sat down at his desk and got to work.

 

. . .

 

Click. Step. _Drag_. Click. Step. _Drag_.

The man Sherlock now referred to as John, was making his way along the train platform, regarding a newspaper article he found rather entertaining, which is why he didn’t look up to take in the station around him until he’d come to his usual bench in his usual spot. When John did look up, what greeted him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Before him, plastered along the tile walls was a neat row of ten wheat-pasted pages, all barring a singular line image of his profile. He blinked at his likeness, drawn so elegantly with what seemed to be an ink brush. He leaned in closer and surveyed the pages, in each one the dark ink faded and ebbed in slightly different variations. These were not copies, these were ten individual, unique yet exact paintings of his face.

“Amazing,” he said to no one, a smile spreading across his lips. “Fantastic.”

He shook his head in amazement and scratched the back of his neck. Who would do such a thing? And why?

He looked around him, but he was still the only one on the platform, which was good considering how self-conscious he suddenly felt. The novelty of the surprise quickly faded to a strange feeling of being watched from afar. It felt like electricity in the air, a small static crackling fissuring over his skin, like the feeling one gets right before a lightning strike. In the army, he was taught if he ever felt such a phenomenon to get to lower ground immediately. Well, John was already Underground, literally, so sod that option.

After one more sweep of the platform ensuring his privacy, John refocused on the paintings. Along the bottom of each was scrawled a line of text in a messy hand. He leaned in close to read each page, one by one.

_What is Obsession?_

_It is the coveting of something (someone) I cannot have._

_You are a fixation I cannot shake._

_I feel for you, dear stranger._

_Dear John._

At this, John blinked and stepped back. “How?”

He spun on his heel, his walking stick clanking loudly to the ground. A few other early morning commuters had joined him on the platform and looked over at the sound, but none keyed into the fact that the new graffiti on the walls bore John’s likeness, and that whoever had painted them knew John’s name.

Adrenalin pumped through John’s veins and made his hands fists at his sides. He turned back round and read on. Somewhere behind him he was aware of the train blowing stale air through the tube tunnel and his fellow commuters leaving him stranded on the platform. He didn’t care. Leaning in, he read on. 

_I have never cared to know someone before._

_But I want to know you._

_My dear, John._

_I have become accustomed to your face._

_Let me learn the rest of you._

John staggered back, floored. He had never experienced such a genuine act of . . . what was this? Was he being courted? Wooed? Stalked? All three? John found that he really didn’t care which because he had never been on the receiving end of a gift like this one. And that’s what this very much was, a gift. He went back to the first page along the wall and took a picture and continued down the line in order, photographing each piece until he had a series of ten images forever captured in the palm of his hand.

Behind him he heard the quiet scuff of a shoe, and his head snapped to the sound. He caught sight of a flash of a dark coat tail before whoever had been watching him dashed up the far stairwell of the platform. John gave chase immediately.

“Hey!”

His legs pumped beneath him as if he were back on the tar sands of Kandahar. He took the stairs two at a time and burst from the Underground into the early morning light with a speed he wasn’t aware he was still capable of. Just ahead of him, fleeing towards the park was a dark slash of a figure cloaked in black, a blue scarf flying in the wind at the man’s neck. John shouted again but didn’t stop running. He was determined to catch him, see this stranger’s face. John had no guarantee that this stranger was the one who had created the heart-stopping display of art for him, but John’s gut instinct growled with the certainty that the running man was the one responsible.

The man darted through an archway at the far end of the park, disappearing from John’s view for only a few seconds before he’d caught up, but it had been enough. The stranger in the dark coat with the dark hair was gone, and only the sounds of John’s heavy breathing remained, echoing in the shadowed archway around him. He bent at the waist, bracing his hands on his knees and shook his head.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

John stood, and turned, feeling deflated, but something caught his notice out of the corner of his eye. There, along the flagstones of the arch was another wheat-pasted page of his profile. John stared in amazement for the second time that morning and jogged forward the few steps to read the note along the bottom.

It simply read: _See_

There was a drawn arrow pointing back towards the entrance of the park. John followed it, rounding the corner, and spotted another painting on the outer side of the arch. He closed in on the page to read the bottom.

_You do not need the cane._

“Oh, you bastard.”

John had whispered it to the page as if it had personally offended him. Sure enough, his hands flexed at his sides, free of his walking stick, and the ever-present twinge in his thigh did not speak up in protest. He stared down at his leg, anger and humor and self-righteous indignation all swirling in his gut for purchase, wanting to choose one and run with the emotion, scream it out of his system. He didn’t. Instead, he snapped a photo of the page, buttoned up his coat and marched back to the Tubes, head held high in defiance.

Defiance of what, he wasn’t sure, but John now knew who that tall man had been. That dark stranger in the long coat with the blue scarf and the black curls. Yes, he knew that man, goddammit.

He also knew how to find him.

Once at work, John made a phone call to the Yard, asking after a certain Detective Inspector he’d had the honour of meeting once in a park. The man did not return his call till late in the evening but thankfully, John was still at work and able to pick up his office phone when the call came through.

“Dr. Watson, this is Detective Inspector, Greg Lestrade. I understand you’ve had another run-in with our mutual friend?”

“Ha! Yeah. Right. _Friend_.”

“What can I do for you, doctor?”

“Well, learning his name would help. For a start.”

“Oh, would it?”

John could practically hear the other man’s smile through the phone line.

 

. . .

 

 

Sherlock lounged in his chair, his head dangling off the back, curls drooping towards the windowsill where the chair now sat pushed up against. The large sash had been thrown open in order for Sherlock to enjoy a cigarette, his tenth of the day, while remaining inside the comfort of his flat. He watched, vision thrown upside down as the swirls of smoke drifted up and out the open window pane, cascading into the night sky. Little pinpricks of stars were barely visible through the city air but Sherlock could make out a few, their lights twinkling back at him as if sharing a secret.

It was a serene moment, a calm one in Sherlock’s mind and he held onto it for its novelty and peace. It was such a rare thing for Sherlock to experience peace.

Quick, assertive footfalls shattered the tranquility. They echoed out beneath him, halting right below at Mrs. Hudson’s front door. Sherlock tilted his head towards the sound but remained in his confidence with the stars, not wanting to look away just yet. The sound of the footsteps came again, making a scuffing drag every other step or so in their circuit. At this observation, a slow smile spread across Sherlock’s face and he closed his eyes, shutting out his heavenly companions above.

“John.”

He whispered it on the night wind, just as the man himself finally pushed the buzzer below.

It took Mrs. Hudson forty-seven seconds to open the door and ask for an introduction. Sherlock listened intently from his relaxed perch by the window.

“Oh, hello. Good evening. I was hoping that a Sherlock Holmes lived here?”

“He does. And who are you, young man?”

“John Watson.”

Sherlock bolted upright, eyes blown wide.

“John!”

Both John and Mrs. Hudson heard his shout and looked upwards towards the first story window.

“Oh, well, it seems that he’s expecting you, then. Do come in, dear.”

Sherlock heard the front door shut and started to pace in a tight circle on the carpet, hands steepled beneath his chin.  The shuffling of feet on the steps came not soon after and Sherlock's heart rate spiked.

“John. His name is truly John.” Sherlock smiled, secretive and self-satisfied. Of course, John was his name. Of course! Sherlock knew it within his soul the moment he saw him. John wasn’t some nameless victim of a thoughtless crime laid out on a slab, he was a warrior prince, the first of his name!

Sherlock shook himself. He did have a dramatic flare, but he may have been taking things a bit too far there. . .

“Yoo hoo!”

Sherlock paused, his back to the sitting room door. He knew that behind him stood Mrs. Hudson and John. _John Watson_. The object of Sherlock's obsession was in his flat, breathing his air, and occupying shared space with him in his sitting room. Yet, Sherlock couldn't move. He was frozen to the spot. His bare feet felt like marble on the hearth rug and his bones like cast bronze, immovable and static.

“Sherlock?”

It wasn’t Mrs. Hudson who'd spoken. Sherlock closed his eyes at the sound.

The air in the flat weighed heavily between the two men. John coughed and shifted his feet. Mrs. Hudson, keying into the tension, made her excuses and left. Once alone, time span out before them in countless breathes and immeasurable heartbeats.

John broke the silence first.

“I’m not angry.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow twitched in traitorous interest. 

“I was. I was furious. How did you even know about the cane-- never mind. It doesn’t matter. I mean, it does, but it’s fine. Just. Will you turn around?”

Sherlock took a deep breath and lowered his head. He felt his feet move of their own volition, turning his body and soon he found himself face-to-face with John Watson: soldier, doctor, upturned nose, creased brow and brushed back swoop of hair. A series of quickly drawn lines culminating in the likeness of a perfect man.

“Hello, John.”

"Hello." 

 

.

.

.

 

_\- Fin -_

* * *

. 

.

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Note: In order to get to Bart’s if you’re traveling on the Bakerloo line around the area of Regent’s Park, which is where Sherlock spots John for the first time, you would need to make a transfer at Oxford Circus to the Central line, and then take that to St. Paul’s. In the paragraph where Sherlock is following John to work, I blatantly ignored this step in the process because I wanted to carry on with the story. So, for a bit of realism, this is (to my knowledge) what should have occurred. I’m an unreliable narrator sometimes. Do, please accept my apologies.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Come find me on Tumblr - [Zigster-Ao3](https://zigster-ao3.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a 500-word ficlet on Tumblr and turned into an 8k beast I couldn't control and I'd like to (blame) thank Tali for the continual encouragement and cheerleading she provided throughout the entire process. 
> 
> This is a stand-alone story but I do plan to write a second part that hopefully involves the boys interacting a bit more. Perhaps a 'draw me like one of your French girls' scene? 
> 
> Just kidding. 
> 
> Or am I? 
> 
> Holy shit, that'd be hilarious.


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